A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 4

In earlier times, when feudal society was young, the n.o.bility had performed a very real service as the defenders of the peasants against foreign enemies and likewise against marauders and bandits of whom the land had been full. Then fighting had been the profession of the n.o.bility, And to enable them to possess the expensive accoutrements of fighting--horses, armor, swords, and lances--the kings and the peasants had a.s.sured them liberal incomes.

Now, however, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the palmy days of feudalism were past and gone. Later generations of n.o.blemen, although they continued by right of inheritance to enjoy the financial income and the social prestige which their forbears had earned, no longer served king, country, or common people in the traditional manner. At least in the national monarchies it was the king who now had undertaken the defense of the land and the preservation of peace; and the n.o.bleman, deprived of his old occupation, had little else to do than to hunt, or quarrel with other n.o.blemen, or engage in political intrigues. More and more the n.o.bility, especially in France, were attracted to a life of amus.e.m.e.nt and luxury in the royal court. The n.o.bility already had outlived its usefulness, yet it retained its old- time privileges.

[Sidenote: The Peasantry]

In striking contrast to the n.o.bility--the small minority of land-owning aristocrats--were the peasantry--the ma.s.s of the people. They were the human beings who had to toil for their bread in the sweat of their brows and who were deemed of ign.o.ble birth, as social inferiors, and as stupid and rude. Actual farm work was "servile labor," and between the man whose hands were stained by servile labor and the person of "gentle birth" a wide gulf was fixed.

[Sidenote: Serfdom and the Manorial System]

During the early middle ages most of the peasants throughout Europe were "serfs." For various reasons, which we shall explain presently, serfdom had tended gradually to and the die out in western Europe, but at the opening of the sixteenth century most of the agricultural laborers in eastern and central Europe, and even a considerable number in France, were still serfs, living and working on n.o.bles' manors in accordance with ancient customs which can be described collectively as the "manorial system."

The serf occupied a position in rural society which it is difficult for us to understand. He was not a slave, such as was usual in the Southern States of the American Union before the Civil War; he was neither a hired man nor a rent-paying tenant-farmer, such as is common enough in all agricultural communities nowadays. The serf was not a slave, because he was free to work for himself at least part of the time; he could not be sold to another master; and he could not be deprived of the right to cultivate land for his own benefit. He was not a hired man, for he received no wages. And he was not a tenant-farmer, inasmuch as he was "attached to the soil," that is, he was bound to stay and work on his land, unless he succeeded in running away or in purchasing complete freedom, in which case he would cease to be a serf and would become a freeman.

[Sidenote: Obligations of the Serf to the Lord]

To the lord of the manor the serf was under many and varied obligations, the most essential of which may be grouped conveniently as follows: (1) The serf had to work without pay two or three days in each week on the strips of land and the fields whose produce belonged exclusively to the n.o.bleman. In the harvest season extra days, known as "boon-days," were stipulated on which the serf must leave his own work in order to harvest for the lord. He also might be called upon in emergencies to draw a cord of wood from the forest to the great manor- house, or to work upon the highway (_corvee_). (2) The serf had to pay occasional dues, customarily "in kind." Thus at certain feast-days he was expected to bring a dozen fat fowls or a bushel of grain to the pantry of the manor-house. (3) Ovens, wine-presses, gristmills, and bridges were usually owned solely by the n.o.bleman, and each time the peasant used them he was obliged to give one of his loaves of bread, a share of his wine, a bushel of his grain, or a toll-fee, as a kind of rent, or "ba.n.a.lity" as it was euphoniously styled. (4) If the serf died without heirs, his holdings were transferred outright to the lord, and if he left heirs, the n.o.bleman had the rights of "heriot," that is, to appropriate the best animal owned by the deceased peasant, and of "relief," that is, to oblige the designated heir to make a definite additional payment that was equivalent to a kind of inheritance tax.

[Sidenote: Free-Tenants]

As has been intimated, the manorial system was already on a steady decline, especially in western Europe, at the opening of the sixteenth century. A goodly number of peasants who had once been serfs were now free-tenants, lessees, or hired laborers. Of course rent of farm-land in our present sense--each owner of the land letting out his property to a tenant and, in return, exacting as large a monetary payment as possible--was then unknown. But there was a growing cla.s.s of peasants who were spoken of as free-tenants to distinguish them from serf- tenants. These free-tenants, while paying regular dues, as did the others, were not compelled to work two or three days every week in the lord's fields, except occasionally in busy seasons such as harvest; they were free to leave the estate and to marry off their daughters or to sell their oxen without the consent of the lord; and they came to regard their customary payments to the lord not so much as his due for their protection as actual rent for their land.

[Sidenote: Hired Laborers]

While more prosperous peasants were becoming free-tenants, many of their poorer neighbors found it so difficult to gain a living as serfs that they were willing to surrender all claim to their own little strips of land on the manor and to devote their whole time to working for fixed wages on the fields which were cultivated for the n.o.bleman himself, the so-called lord's demesne. Thus a body of hired laborers grew up claiming no land beyond that on which their miserable huts stood and possibly their small garden-plots.

[Sidenote: Metayers]

Besides hired laborers and free-tenants, a third group of peasants appeared in places where the n.o.ble proprietor did not care to superintend the cultivation of his own land. In this case he parceled it out among particular peasants, furnishing each with livestock and a plow and expecting in return a fixed proportion of the crops, which in France usually amounted to one-half. Peasants who made such a bargain were called in France _metayers_, and in England "stock-and-land lessees." The arrangement was not different essentially from the familiar present-day practice of working a farm "on shares."

[Sidenote: Steady Decline of Serfdom]

In France and in England the serfs had mostly become hired laborers, tenants, or _metayers_ by the sixteenth century. The obligations of serfdom had proved too galling for the serf and too unprofitable for the lord. It was much easier and cheaper for the latter to hire men to work just when he needed them, than to bother with serfs, who could not be discharged readily for slackness, and who naturally worked for themselves far more zealously than for him. For this reason many landlords were glad to allow their serfs to make payments in money or in grain in lieu of the performance of customary labor. In England, moreover, many lords, finding it profitable to inclose [Footnote: There were no fences on the old manors. Inclosing a plot of ground meant fencing or hedging it in.] their land in order to utilize it as pasturage for sheep, voluntarily freed their serfs. The result was that serfdom virtually had disappeared in England before the sixteenth century. In France as early as the fourteenth century the bulk of the serfs had purchased their liberty, although in a few districts serfdom remained in its pristine vigor until the French Revolution.

In other countries agricultural conditions were more backward and serfdom longer survived. Prussian and Austrian landowners retained their serfs until the nineteenth century; the emanc.i.p.ation of Russian serfs on a large scale was not inaugurated until 1861. There are still survivals of serfdom in parts of eastern Europe.

[Sidenote: Survival of Servile Obligations after Decline of Serfdom]

Emanc.i.p.ation from serfdom by no means released the peasants from all the disabilities under which they labored as serfs. True, the freeman no longer had week-work to do, provided he could pay for his time, and in theory at least he could marry as he chose and move freely from place to place. But he might still be called upon for an occasional day's labor, he still was expected to work on the roads, and he still had to pay annoying fees for oven, mill, and wine-press. Then, too, his own crops might be eaten with impunity by doves from the n.o.ble dovecote or trampled underfoot by a merry hunting-party from the manor-house.

The peasant himself ventured not to hunt: he was precluded even from shooting the deer that devoured his garden. Certain other customs prevailed in various localities, conceived originally no doubt in a spirit of good-natured familiarity between n.o.ble and peasants, but now grown irritating if none the less humorous. It is said, for instance, that in some places newly married couples were compelled to vault the wall of the churchyard, and that on certain nights the peasants were obliged to beat the castle ditch in order to rest the lord's family from the dismal croaking of the frogs.

[Sidenote: Persistence of "Three-field System" of Agriculture]

In another important respect the manorial system survived long after serfdom had begun to decline. This was the method of doing farm work. A universal and insistent tradition had fixed agricultural method on the medieval manor and tended to preserve it unaltered well into modern times. The tradition was that of the "three-field system" of agriculture. The land of the manor, which might vary in amount from a few hundred to five thousand acres, was not divided up into farms of irregular shape and size, as it would be now. The waste-land, which could be used only for pasture, and the woodland on the outskirts of the clearing, were treated as "commons," that is to say, each villager, as well as the lord of the manor, might freely gather fire-wood, or he might turn his swine loose to feed on the acorns in the forest and his cattle to graze over the entire pasture. The cultivable or arable land was divided into several--usually three--great grain fields. Ridges or "balks" of unplowed turf divided each field into long parallel strips, which were usually forty rods or a furlong (furrow-long) in length, and from one to four rods wide. Each peasant had exclusive right to one or more of these strips in each of the three great fields, making, say, thirty acres in all; [Footnote: In some localities it was usual to redistribute these strips every year. In that way the greater part of the manor was theoretically "common" land, and no peasant had a right of private ownership to any one strip.] the lord too had individual right to a number of strips in the great fields.

[Sidenote: Disadvantages of Three-field System of Agriculture]

This so-called three-field system of agriculture was distinctly disadvantageous in many ways. Much time was wasted in going back and forth between the scattered plots of land. The individual peasant, moreover, was bound by custom to cultivate his land precisely as his ancestors had done, without attempting to introduce improvements. He grew the same crops as his neighbors--usually wheat or rye in one field; beans or barley in the second; and nothing in the third. Little was known about preserving the fertility of the soil by artificial manuring or by rotation of crops; and, although every year one-third of the land was left "fallow" (uncultivated) in order to restore its fertility, the yield per acre was hardly a fourth as large as now. Farm implements were of the crudest kind; scythes and sickles did the work of mowing machines; plows were made of wood, occasionally shod with iron; and threshing was done with flails. After the grain had been harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on the supposition that the fields were common property. It was useless to attempt to breed fine cattle when all were herded together. The breed deteriorated, and both cattle and sheep were undersized and poor. A full-grown ox was hardly larger than a good-sized calf of the present time. Moreover, there were no potatoes or turnips, and few farmers grew clover or other gra.s.ses for winter fodder. It was impossible, therefore, to keep many cattle through the winter; most of the animals were killed off in the autumn and salted down for the long winter months when it was impossible to secure fresh meat.

[Sidenote: Peasant Life on the Manor]

Crude farm-methods and the heavy dues exacted by the lord [Footnote: In addition to the dues paid to the lay lord, the peasants were under obligation to make a regular contribution to the church, which was called the "t.i.the" and amounted to a share, less than a tenth, of the annual crops.] of the manor must have left the poor man little for himself. Compared with the comfort of the farmer today, the poverty of sixteenth-century peasants must have been inexpressibly distressful.

How keenly the cold pierced the dark huts of the poorest, is hard for us to imagine. The winter diet of salt meat, the lack of vegetables, the chronic filth and squalor, and the sorry ignorance of all laws of health opened the way to disease and contagion. And if the crops failed, famine was added to plague.

On the other hand we must not forget that the tenement-houses of our great cities have been crowded in the nineteenth century with people more miserable than ever was serf of the middle ages. The serf, at any rate, had the open air instead of a factory in which to work. When times were good, he had grain and meat in plenty, and possibly wine or cider, and he hardly envied the tapestried chambers, the bejeweled clothes, and the spiced foods of the n.o.bility, for he looked upon them as belonging to a different world.

In one place n.o.bleman and peasant met on a common footing--in the village church. There, on Sundays and feast-days, they came together as Christians to hear Ma.s.s; and afterwards, perhaps, holiday games and dancing on the green, benignantly patronized by the lord's family, helped the common folk to forget their labors. The village priest, [Footnote: Usually very different from the higher clergy, who had large landed estates of their own, the parish priests had but modest incomes from the t.i.thes of their parishioners and frequently eked out a living by toiling on allotted patches of ground. The monks too were ordinarily poor, although the monastery might be wealthy, and they likewise often tilled the fields.] himself often of humble birth, though the most learned man on the manor, was at once the friend and benefactor of the poor and the spiritual director of the lord. Occasionally a visit of the bishop to administer confirmation to the children, afforded an opportunity for gayety and universal festivity.

[Sidenote: Rural Isolation and Conservatism]

At other times there was little to disturb the monotony of village life and little to remind it of the outside world, except when a gossiping peddler chanced along, or when the squire rode away to court or to war.

Intercourse with other villages was unnecessary, unless there were no blacksmith or miller on the spot. The roads were poor and in wet weather impa.s.sable. Travel was largely on horseback, and what few commodities were carried from place to place were transported by pack- horses. Only a few old soldiers, and possibly a priest, had traveled very much; they were the only geographies and the only books of travel which the village possessed, for few peasants could read or write.

Self-sufficient and secluded from the outer world, the rural village went on treasuring its traditions, keeping its old customs, century after century. The country instinctively distrusted all novelties; it always preferred old ways to new; it was heartily conservative.

Country-folk did not discover America. It was the enterprise of the cities, with their growing industries and commerce, which brought about the Commercial Revolution; and to the development of commerce, industry, and the towns, we now must turn our attention.

TOWNS ON THE EVE OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Trade and the Towns ]

Except for the wealthy Italian city-states and a few other cities which traced their history back to Roman times, most European towns, it must be remembered, dated only from the later middle ages. At first there was little excuse for their existence except to sell to farmers salt, fish, iron, and a few plows. But with the increase of commerce, which, as we shall see, especially marked the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, more merchants traveled through the country, ways of spending money multiplied, and the little agricultural villages learned to look on the town as the place to buy not only luxuries but such tools, clothing, and shoes as could be manufactured more conveniently by skillful town artisans than by clumsy rustics. The towns, moreover, became exchanges where surplus farm products could be marketed, where wine could be bartered for wool, or wheat for flax. And as the towns grew in size, the prosperous citizens proved to be the best customers for foreign luxuries, and foreign trade grew apace.

Town, trade, and industry thus worked together: trade stimulated industry, industry a.s.sisted trade, and the town profited by both. By the sixteenth century the towns had grown out of their infancy and were maintaining a great measure of political and economic freedom.

[Sidenote: Freedom of the Towns.]

[Sidenote: Town Charters]

Originally many a town had belonged to some n.o.bleman's extensive manor and its inhabitants had been under much the same servile obligations to the lord as were the strictly rural serfs. But with the lapse of time and the growth of the towns, the townsmen or burghers had begun a struggle for freedom from their feudal lords. They did not want to pay servile dues to a baron, but preferred to subst.i.tute a fixed annual payment for individual obligations; they besought the right to manage their market; they wished to have cases at law tried in a court of their own rather than in the feudal court over which the n.o.bleman presided; and they demanded the right to pay all taxes in a lump sum for the town, themselves a.s.sessing and collecting the share of each citizen. These concessions they eventually had won, and each city had its charter, in which its privileges were enumerated and recognized by the authority of the n.o.bleman, or of the king, to whom the city owed allegiance. In England these charters had been acquired generally by merchant gilds, upon payment of a substantial sum to the n.o.bleman; in France frequently the townsmen had formed a.s.sociations, called _communes_, and had rebelled successfully against their feudal lords; in Germany the cities had leagued together for mutual protection and for the acquisition of common privileges. Other towns, formerly founded by bishops, abbots, or counts, had received charters at the very outset.

[Sidenote: Merchant Gilds]

A peculiar outgrowth of the need for protection against oppressive feudal lords, as well as against thieves, swindlers, and dishonest workmen, had been the typically urban organization known as the merchant gild or the merchants' company. In the year 1500 the merchant gilds were everywhere on the decline, but they still preserved many of their earlier and more glorious traditions. At the time of their greatest importance they had embraced merchants, butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers: in fact, all who bought or sold in the town were included in the gild. And the merchant gild had then possessed the widest functions.

[Sidenote: Earlier Functions of the Merchant Gild.]

[Sidenote: Social]

Its social and religious functions, inherited from much earlier bodies, consisted in paying some special honor to a patron saint, in giving aid to members in sickness or misfortune, attending funerals, and also in the more enjoyable meetings when the freely flowing bowl enlivened the transaction of gild business.

[Sidenote: Protective]

As a protective organization, the gild had been particularly effective.

Backed by the combined forces of all the gildsmen, it was able to a.s.sert itself against the lord who claimed manorial rights over the town, and to insist that a runaway serf who had lived in the town for a year and a day should not be dragged back to perform his servile labor on the manor, but should be recognized as a freeman. The protection of the gild was accorded also to townsmen on their travels. In those days all strangers were regarded as suspicious persons, and not infrequently when a merchant of the gild traveled to another town he would be set upon and robbed or cast into prison. In such cases it was necessary for the gild to ransom the imprisoned "brother" and, if possible, to punish the persons who had done the injury, so that thereafter the liberties of the gild members would be respected. That the business of the gild might be increased, it was often desirable to enter into special arrangements with neighboring cities whereby the rights, lives, and properties of gildsmen were guaranteed; and the gild as a whole was responsible for the debts of any of its members.

[Sidenote: Regulative]

The most important duty of the gild had been the regulation of the home market. Burdensome restrictions were laid upon the stranger who attempted to utilize the advantages of the market without sharing the expense of maintenance. No goods were allowed to be carried away from the city if the townsmen wished to buy; and a tax, called in France the _octroi_, was levied on goods brought into the town. [Footnote: The _octroi_ is still collected in Paris.] Moreover, a conviction prevailed that the gild was morally bound to enforce honest straightforward methods of business; and the "wardens" appointed by the gild to supervise the market endeavored to prevent, as dishonest practices, "forestalling" (buying outside of the regular market), "engrossing" (cornering the market), [Footnote: The idea that "combinations in restraint of trade" are wrong quite possibly goes back to this abhorrence of engrossing.] and "regrating" (retailing at higher than market price). The dishonest green grocer was not allowed to use a peck-measure with false bottom, for weighing and measuring were done by officials. Cheats were fined heavily and, if they persisted in their evil ways, they might be expelled from the gild.

These merchant gilds, with their social, protective, and regulative functions, had first begun to be important in the eleventh century. In England, where their growth was most rapid, 82 out of the total of 102 towns had merchant gilds by the end of the thirteenth century.

[Footnote: Several important places, such as London, Colchester, and Norwich, belonged to the small minority without merchant gilds.] On the Continent many towns, especially in Germany, had quite different arrangements, and where merchant gilds existed, they were often exclusive and selfish groups of merchants in a single branch of business.